Joshua

Hello! I'm Joshua Allen, evangelist at Microsoft, and your host for MIX Online.
You can contact me for anything related to MIX Online by e-mailing me at joshua.allen (at) hotmail.com.
As an evangelist, I've specialized in web browsers, RSS, and microformats. During my time at Microsoft I have been PM working on Netdocs, SQLXML, XML APIs, Micropayments, the unofficial semantic web agitator and some other things. I've also helped many customers with web scalability and data mining. I am always looking for cool new ideas, companies, and demos about next generation web technologies.

The Phizzpop Design Challenge last year produced some of the coolest concepts and applications I've ever seen. It's back again this year, and bigger than ever.Once again, web designers from the U.S. and around the world are having their design skills put to the test as they compete in four…

Why are Google and Microsoft creating large centralized databases of people's medical histories? Why are two Internet giants getting involved in medicine? And what is Microsoft doing to protect patients' privacy?Watch this intriguing interview with George Scriban, Product Manager for HealthVault,…

The search features of IE8 have really changed the way I work. One of the coolest new features is Visual Search, which is kind of like search suggestions, but more awesome. Check out this quick screen capture to see Visual Search in action. A bunch of sites already support Visual Search,…

Did you know that the new Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8 includes some new features to help protect your privacy? There are some similarities to the privacy features of Safari, but some interesting new ideas implemented.Check out this blog post from the IE8 team describing the new privacy…

Companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft, and (especially) Google depend on being able to track your browsing habits to better target you with advertisements. In the past 2 years, the proportion of ads being served through ad tracking networks has climbed from 5% to more than 30%, so these tracking…

Reader JenST responds to my recent analysis of "smartphone carnage", saying: "See BT purchased Ribbit. This could be the first move of the carriers to take control from Google, Microsoft, Apple." JP Rangaswami, the guy at BT responsible for this acquisition, is one of my…

I can still remember meeting with people from RIMM 10 years ago, as they were a relative upstart compared to Palm, and were feeling out Microsoft’s intentions in the smart phone space. Since then, a lot has happened. Lots of new players and threats have emerged, and many have fizzled out after…

Yahoo! just announced that they are opening up their search engine for people to re-rank and augment search results to create custom search engines. I saw an early version of this feature (named Yahoo! BOSS), and have been anticipating the release. Unsuprisingly, I think that some of the popular…

The New York Times and Times of London this week took two very different views on the issue of online privacy. The New York Times opines that people (especially people in "terrorist" countries) need to get accustomed to having their activities recorded and judged by concerned fellow…

OK, after being initially skeptical, I’ve become convinced that Yahoo! SearchMonkey has the potential to really change the game in search. The evidence is mounting that they have really thought this through, and that they intend to disrupt the existing order. The plan is somewhat crazy, but this…